← The Money Mondays
The Money Mondays
Making Money Online? Here’s What No One Tells You | Dion Pouncil & Brandon Bowsky 💰 EP120
00:52:12
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- [00:00]
Dan
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Dion Pouncel
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. We are here in Miami, Florida at Drew's the Move podcast studio. The Move has three studios in this building. At some point, they're gonna have multiple more studios here because it is amazing what they're doing. They're so busy. I'm glad they got to sneak us in here to make this episode for today for your listening pleasure. As you guys know, these podcasts are under 45 minutes because they. The average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Now, we only cover three core how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. With our guest today, Deon Pouncel, he has trained over 20,000 students how to trade in the stock market. I'm gonna let him get into more details about what that means. I don't want to mess it up. I want him to explain why, what that means for people, and so that you guys can understand. Maybe you want to learn, maybe you want to research and dive into that space. We all hear about it, we all see it, but I want to dive into, why does he do it? How has he been doing it? Why have 20,000 plus people paid to learn from him? And while we do that, we're going to cover those three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Now, as you're listening to this, keep in mind you're not just listening for yourself. These podcasts are designed with billionaires and zillionaires, stock traders, influencers, celebrities, everyone in between so that you might be able to listen to something for your past, present, and future. There might be people that you know from your past, present, future that you could talk to about stock trading, that maybe you're not interested in it, but you could learn about it on this episode and vice versa. There's going to be other episodes that you might listen to someone and it's only impactful for you. So the whole point of these podcasts is to bring you different types of characters to talk about the three main topics. You can get different perspectives for the people in your life. All right, without further ado, Dion, give us the quick 2 minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
- [01:54]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. Single parent, home, south side of Chicago. Played baseball through high school, college and minor league, independent professional baseball. Transitioned into business in the corporate world. Already knew that that wasn't for me. Got into entrepreneurship, doing different type of Side businesses, created an agency that worked a little bit, got some data from it, went to Silicon Valley in L. A, raised some money for tech, didn't work out, met a billionaire guy in Dubai. He's like, you're smart, you should go work for my hedge fund, start from the ground up. I did that three months later to fund sunset. I got inspired, studied, got my license of a Series 3, became a professional futures trader and investor. And I thought if this was my background and I got into it in an untraditional route, how many more people would be interested in that, want to learn that and do it for themselves? And so started a program to be able to teach people how to trade and invest the professional way, but from a unique standpoint. And we've helped create four or five, six and seven figure traders now with over 20,000 students worldwide.
- [03:08]
Dion Pouncel
So on the make money side, when can someone actually get into the stock market? When can they actually trade? Do they need tens of thousand dollars, hundreds of thousand dollars, or can they start with a thousand bucks?
- [03:17]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, man. I started my first live trading account with fifteen hundred dollars.
- [03:20]
Dion Pouncel
Fifteen hundred bucks.
- [03:20]
Brandon Bowski
Fifteen hundred bucks. So you can start from anywhere. As long as you're 18 and have the ability to open up a brokerage account, you can start and bet on yourself. And many of people have done it. The more information you have about it. Yes, you can get more and better edges, but you don't have to be a rocket science to make money.
- [03:38]
Dion Pouncel
How can someone first start studying? Where can they first start listening to certain podcasts, watching certain youtubes, listening online? Where can people first start to learn about this?
- [03:47]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, I'm kind of anti going down the YouTube university rabbit hole for trade and investing because the difficulty is that most people don't know how to separate the good from the bad or the truth from the the BS. But what I would say is first if you can find a proven coach or mentor, ideally that you may be able to meet in person, or you can find out about their ability to actually do what they say they can do, would be the first option if possible. The next thing would be yes, you can then find a online course of somebody that's actually doing it in real life. And then if you can't do one of those two options, then I would look at books from proven trading and investors to start there.
- [04:33]
Dion Pouncel
Do you have one main website or one main place that people can look at?
- [04:37]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, so for us it's trade like the pros dot com. That's my whole thing is teaching people how to Trade like the pros without going through all of the bs. But if I were starting the book that literally inspired me outside of the fun was Beat the Markets by Edward Thorpe. I came across his book prior to trading and investing called Beat the Dealer because I like numbers and taught myself how to count cards for blackjack reading Beat the Dealer and made a substantial amount of money off of that in Vegas. And so two years later I came across his book Beat the Markets. And this guy, if you ever seen the movie 21 where Kevin Spacey plays the guy that teaches his students how to crack count cards and go to Vegas and make money, this, that movie is based off of Everest. Thorpe's real life. So he was a college professor out in Boston, math and physics major, created an algorithm to beat the dealers in casino, got bored and now runs a $50 billion fund that's fully algorithmic and from trading and investing. So that book is what inspired me to get over the hump. And that's where if I had to start today, right now, I would still start with that book.
- [05:51]
Dion Pouncel
Can someone have a normal 9 to 5 job and do trading on the side?
- [05:56]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, absolutely. So the 9 to 5 as an excuse is out of the window now. One, I am licensing futures. The futures market is open 22 hours a day, six days a week. The crypto market is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The forex market is open 24 hours a day,. Six days a week. Stocks, bonds and options is were open eight hours a day, five days a week. So literally no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an Internet connection, you can put your money to work for you and trade and invest.
- [06:28]
Dion Pouncel
Do you think the stock market at some point will be 24, 7?
- [06:31]
Brandon Bowski
Yes. A couple of brokerages like Charles Schwab have already announced that they will allow 24 hour trading in the initial big indexes and things like that. So I think it's inevitable. I probably think we're less than 36 months away.
- [06:47]
Dion Pouncel
Whoa.
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Brandon Bowski
From the major exchanges making all of their major indices available 24 hours because they have to be able to keep interest from people who are looking at the crypto markets as well as sports betting and sports gambling, which is getting huge. So they have to be able to keep some market share and some mind share because the younger generation is not necessarily interested in long term investing right now. They're definitely big on trading, but long term investing is not something that is kind of top of mind. And when they think about these legacy exchanges, the first thing they think about is stocks. And for a lot of them, stocks is boring and stocks move too slow, especially if you don't have the amount of capital to really make the moves that you want.
- [07:35]
Dion Pouncel
So a lot of people, when they picture the stock market, they picture the New York Stock Exchange, all the guys in suits writing down a piece of paper and holding it up to trade. Like, is that still going on? Is that still happening?
- [07:45]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, so that's called open outcry. So those are people in the pitch yelling they want to buy and sell. That is only available in Chicago right now, I believe at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I think that might be the one or one of less than probably 10 open outcries around the world. Everything else is essentially computer driven. 80% of all trades globally are done by algorithms. So it is computers. It is people behind computers making manual or discretionary trades. Or there are algorithmic quantitative traders and investors like myself and others. Or you have hybrids where they'll get these signals from the algorithms and then they'll still make the trades or investments manually.
- [08:29]
Dion Pouncel
So there's a epic TV show called Billions, my favorite show. On that show there was what's called a quant, and they were hiring multiple quants, but there was one main quant that became truly the star of the show. What the heck is a quant?
- [08:43]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, so a quantitative developer or quantitative trader is a person who studies math and science, that they're very good at statistical models and the quantitative side of data analysis. And then they also can program via computers. So then they can combine that as a hybrid and they can take those models and, and actually code them into algorithms to trade and invest for them fully, automatically. Now the thing, a lot of people get overwhelmed or they get nervous when they hear about the word quant or they hear the word algorithm. Algorithm simply is just a step by step process. So if you get up every day and you have the same routine, you get up, you check your phone, you brush your teeth, you take a shower, et cetera, et cetera, that's your daily routine or daily algorithm. And so whatever it is that you do that can be done on the computer, can actually be programmed and can be automated. And it follows that same step by step process. Why that's powerful and important when it comes to trading is because it doesn't have the same default negative things that a human may have. The algorithms don't get tired, they don't have partners or kids, they don't have jobs. They don't get distracted by social media mentions Et cetera, et cetera. They just follow the same step by step process, efficiently and effectively the same way every single time. And when it comes to trading, investing, you actually would prefer that, because some of the biggest mistakes and biggest impacts on people's negative trading are the human element.
- [10:12]
Dion Pouncel
So on the investing side, outside of the trading side, would you ever just invest into Apple or Tesla or Google or Netflix or Facebook, like S&P 500, would you ever just deploy capital, just sits, or are you always active?
- [10:24]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, 100%. I think you need a hybrid of a passive portfolio and an active portfolio. So passive is where you're just putting the money for, to work for you. Bigger picture, long term, think generational wealth building and think active for trading. So first and foremost, in the eyes of the IRS, 366 days is the first day of an investment. So investing and trading are similar, but they're different. Not only in general by definition, but they're different in the eyes of the irs. So long term capital gains and long term capital losses start at 366 days and beyond. So that is what an investment is. So one year or longer is an investment. One year or shorter is a trade. That's everything from nanoseconds all the way up to a year. So the first, first thing that everybody really needs to understand is that investing and trading are different. Now, when I think about investing, the simplest thing that anybody that's listening to this can do right now is a dividend portfolio, the diversified dividend portfolio. And one of the easiest ways to do that is look up what's called the Dividend Aristocrats and the Dividend Kings. So Dividend Aristocrats are companies that have paid dividends and increased their dividends every year for the last 50 years. And dividend kings are every company that has paid dividend and increased their dividend every year for the last 25 years. So you can do two things. One, you could take out or Google or research a dividend calculator. And you could put in this dividend calculator how much money you want to make a year without working. And you say, I want to live off of $100,000 a year. And that dividend calculator will tell you how much you need to put into a dividend portfolio and how much that dividend portfolio needs to pay you monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually for you to literally put your money to work for you. And you never have to work for that money again as long as those companies stay around. So now you got the Dividend calculator and you know how much money you want to live off of a year and then you obviously need to get that capital and then you put that into a dividend portfolio. And I personally, if I'm starting from scratch, I would do a dividend Aristocrat portfolio or a dividend King portfolio. And obviously this is not trading investing advice. But if I'm starting from scratch and I'm looking to invest and not be active, that is what I would do to have a solid portfolio. And then the next step with that is I would take a loan against that portfolio because loans are tax free. And then I would actively trade. And as long as my active investments of my active trading is outperforming the interest payment on my loan, then I'm capturing that spread tax free.
- [13:11]
Dion Pouncel
So I often talk about what I call 40, 40, 20, low risk investing, medium risk investing, high risk investing in the middle. I talk about the stock market, I talked about my top 10 favorite stocks. But over here I talk about the S&P 500 averaging over 11% a year for the last 92 years. What are your thoughts about the S&P 500 is something someone should research? Is it something that you consider?
- [13:31]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. If you are looking for passive. If you're looking for just an index fund or you're looking for something to where you can put it and not necessarily think about it as often, then the S&P 500, the QQQ, the these type of ETFs are low to medium risk. They are consistent and they've been proven over time. And if you are not looking to actively trade, and this is what I tell people all the time, if you're looking to produce daily, weekly, monthly income, that's trading. If you're looking to just grow your wealth over time through slow accumulation or compounding interest, then you can look at investment portfolio. So The S&P 500 most popularly traded instrument and asset on the class is the spy etf. You can look at that. You don't need a fund manager, you don't need a course, you don't need a mentor. Do your research to make sure that you're educated and informed. Select you a high quality dollar cost averaging strategy. Frequency of what and when you want to put that amount in, keep that same amount in that same consistency of frequency. Set it, rinse, repeat and keep doing it.
- [14:39]
Dion Pouncel
So I walked into your hotel room and you had this whole entire setup of just computers and things going on and charts going on. Do you do that in all these cities? Like what? What was that?
- [14:49]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. No. So Miami is always one of my favorite cities. We own real estate here and all of that. So it's not a hard sell for me to come to Miami and do extended trips and things of that nature. And I've been traveling now for. I've been in 10 cities in the last 45 days, including three countries. But this was the longest part of the trip that I had the opportunity to sit down for a second and catch up on some things. And I have my actual hedge fund that I'm licensed and I run, and I have a team of quantitative developers that work with them for me to create my trading strategies into algorithms. Then I have just my personal money management and trading accounts and stuff like that. And then I have the program where I actually teach people how to trade and invest, and I go live with them twice a week. And so when I do that, I feel more comfortable being at my station, being able to see the things that I'm looking at for my business and or my fund while separately on another screen, I can be able to teach and lock in and focus on them. And when I'm traveling all the time, although most of my stuff is in remote servers, if I'm only on the laptop, I only have one screen and I can basically only really be able to lock in and focus on what that is and not really see what else is going on. Although I look at my fund and my team is like, we're like NASA Mission Control. We're not really actually up there, you know, managing the rocket ships in person, but we're in NASA just making sure that the algorithms and the technology works and does what it's supposed to do. So when I have extended trips, I mean, cost me 400 bucks, 100 bucks a screen to buy for four screens. Cost me $50 to get a dude from Task Rabbit to set it up. So 500 bucks. It was set up when.
- [16:38]
Dion Pouncel
I mean, that was like a serious setup.
- [16:41]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. But the time it took, it took me three minutes to order those screen on Amazon. They came same day shout out to Jeff Bezos with the same day delivery. The Task Rabbit do showed up at 9 o'clock. It was all done within four hours of me thinking about it. So it wasn't really a. A big thought or big deal. And then, you know, I got family and friends down here. I'll just give the screen somebody and go to the next, make a training.
- [17:06]
Dion Pouncel
Video about how to set up shop in 15 hours for 500 bucks, literally.
- [17:11]
Brandon Bowski
And then I Mean, we made the first couple of trades, we were on the community and we made $1,100 in three minutes. So it literally paid for itself in the first day, we had the next.
- [17:21]
Dion Pouncel
So you go live twice a week with trade like the pros?
- [17:23]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah.
- [17:24]
Dion Pouncel
What are they watching?
- [17:26]
Brandon Bowski
So when you join trade like the pros, you have the actual course where I actually teach you step by step. And one of the main things and the way I teach is I start with the glossary first. Because you have the best strategies, you could have the best program in the world. If people literally don't know the words that you are using, it doesn't matter. And when you're talking finance, you talk to trading, you talk investing, you talk about Wall street things. It's literally like learning another language. Right. So we start with the glossary. We teach people first, then we teach them the strategies, we teach them the math. Because I believe the chart patterns are, I don't believe that, you know, real high level professional traders use chart patterns. So we are not chart patterns over here. We're very data driven, proven things that can be substantiated by math and back testing. And then part of the program you get the community. So you get our private trading community where you're able to be and connected with everybody via Discord and Slack. And then I actually trade live with you a couple times a week. So we're, they're watching live in real time. The algorithms work and generate signals and trade fully automatically as well as me coaching and teaching them through things and then I'm answering questions for them in real time. So with the program we have a 24 hour AI teaching assistant, we have a 24 hour trading co pilot, we have customer service humans and then we have me teaching and answering questions live with the community. And that makes them not only feel that the program is valuable over delivers, but it also makes them feel comfortable. They can ask questions in real time about what they may be seeing, what they're thinking. Especially you know, this year with all of the market volatility and every five minutes there's a news announcement or a tweet or somebody comes out and says something, the market goes crazy. It gives them some comfort to be able to say, hey, you know what, I can get a professional thought or professional insight on this in real time a couple of times a week.
- [19:21]
Dion Pouncel
So someone did it, they went to trade like the pros.com they bought your course, they watched all the videos, they spent a year and they built up a bankroll. Now they Got hundreds of thousand dollars. They feel a little bit empty inside because they don't do any charity stuff. Why do you think it's important to incorporate philanthropy or charity into people's lives?
- [19:38]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah, I think it's important 100% because if someone didn't do it for me, then I literally wouldn't be here. Right. Because I grew up in a single parent home on the south side of Chicago in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s. And if it wasn't for my coaches and my pastors and my mentors to be able to step in and help fill that gap for my mom as well as my other teammates and stuff like that, to help keep us out of the streets, keep us on the straight path, then that would have impacted me substantially. Second, I played for the RBI local and national team, which was sponsored by the Boys and Girls Club of America. So without those people investing in donating and philanthropic efforts into Boys and Girls Club, into the RBI programs, I literally wouldn't have been able to afford to do some of those things. Right. So I think it's important in general because I am a product of that help, that service, that commitment, that philanthropy. And then when you start to get money and you get to a certain level, it's only so much you can buy, it's only so much you can do. And you start to realize that all these material things that you may have wanted and things to do don't bring you any completeness or value because you start to realize that it's really from you and within. So you start to look at money as really just what it is, a tool. It's a tool for you to live and design a lifestyle that you want to. To live. But then it's also a tool for you to be able to use and help other people. And I think that's why it's extremely important to put money in its proper place of how you view it. And then you can also use that to help other people enrich their lives.
- [21:18]
Dion Pouncel
So there's only one question I ask on every single episode and I've never got the same answer. So you're going to be going public later this year through an etf. Maybe you do multiple companies, a bunch of different investments and become worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of time. But you've got two beautiful children.
- [21:34]
Brandon Bowski
Yes, yes.
- [21:35]
Dion Pouncel
So if you accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars, what percentage of your net worth do you end up leaving to those children?
- [21:41]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. So for me, I'm only thinking B's And T's for sure. There we go. But as a, as a numbers guy, like from, in our program, I teach people about the 5% rule that you should never trade or invest in an individual opportunity, more than 5% of your available cash balance. And I teach people that that's not only a trading rule, but you should look at that across your entire wealth. And that allows you to never put yourself in a position where you blow through all your money on one opportunity. And as I look at my daughters, they're already trust fund babies, literally, and they're a thousand times beyond my starting point. I want to put them in a position to where they not only know what money is, they know how to use it, but they're educated on how to protect it and grow it. Because I knew how to make money and I knew how to work hard and I knew how to hustle. But I made my. I started my first company, I was 25. I made my first million, I was 28. I was broke again by 29 because I didn't know how to protect the money and do all of those things. And I had to learn through that once I got into trading and finance. So, yes, I want them to have money, yes, I want them to know how to use money, but I want them to know how to protect it and grow it so it can be in for generations. And nobody in our family or bloodline has to start where I had to start. So I always say generational curses ran in my family until they ran into me. Right. So that's number one. Number two is from a percentage standpoint, me personally, I want to make sure that it follows more of the kind of Rockefeller Rothschild model to where it's waterfalled through the generations. So it would start with at least 50% strategically allocated to my seeds and my bloodline so that they have that wrapped in trust with rules. And then the other 50 would be set up in philanthropic efforts that they would manage through the family trust and things like that.
- [23:44]
Dion Pouncel
Can people find you on social media where you can go to trade like the pros, talk us through everything?
- [23:48]
Brandon Bowski
Yeah. So on all social media platforms, I'm just Dion Pouncel. My name the program where you can be able to learn, earn, and hopefully return for your family is trade like the pros dot com. And then as we are going public, as John, as Dan alluded to, let's restart that one. Okay. So yes, I can be found at Dion Pouncel, which is all of my social media platforms. The website is Trey like the pros.com for anybody that wants to join the course or learn from me. And then as Dan mentioned and alluded to earlier, we are in the process of getting ready to release our first ETF public on a New York stock exchange under the ticker zpg. And that is Fusion Quant Technologies.
- [24:40]
Dion Pouncel
Alright guys, the whole point of this podcast is for you to have discussions with your friends, family and followers about money. A lot of us grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's ridiculous. We have to have these discussions. We have to be able to be blunt about it because money is part of your real life. It's part of your daily life. So you have to be able to talk about accounting, taxes, finances. Should I borrow this money? Should I loan this car? Should I lease Finance, Should I get this apartment? Should I buy a house? These are all real life things. With your salary, there's so many questions because part of your real life. So have these discussions. Check out Dion Pouncel across social media. Check out tradelikethepros.com we will see you guys next Monday on the Money Mondays.com Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. Now, as you guys know, normally this podcast takes place in an RV motorhome for the last 120 episodes in a row. But when I'm in town here in Miami, I have a special guest who drove over an hour to be here. I had to make an exception. So we're inside the Move studio with Drew's the Move. It's amazing. Studio actually has three studios in one building. So it's very useful and very versatile. And so my guest is actually here so we can shoot VSLs, sales pitches, commercials, ads, paid ads on all the different platforms. We're like, why don't we make a podcast? So this is perfect timing. And so I've been wanting to interview him for a long time because he spent over $1 billion and created all this e commerce magic for brands, for products. He's gonna get into the details of it. I can't explain it as good as he can, but what's really important is he finds brands or he finds products or he finds people that he can help scale at a rapid rate because of the efficiencies of how much he spent over the course of time. So without further ado, we're gonna cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. But first we're going to have a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money with Mr. Brandon bowski.
- [26:30]
Dan
How's it going? Thanks for having me Dan. Appreciate you. Let's see. Background was a professional gamer when I dropped out of school at 15. Got into DJing and producing electronic music after that ended up doing a brief stint as a manager of electronic artists. Partner screwed me over. Had a subscription box startup in 2015 when that was still hot, brand new. Failed miserably and then ended up living in my car and somebody said go try insurance. So I did and ended up growing a pretty big agency. Hundreds of employees from 30 at the time when I started there, left that, started my own thing, made a few million dollars and then that turned into wanting to buy a watch. Ex girlfriend didn't want me to spend money so I decided I would make the money on the side. She couldn't get mad. That led to a lead gen empire that did hundreds of millions of dollars and and powered over a billion dollars in revenue for clients. Well over 5 billion, probably close to 10 billion now in insurance premium and then now today just focused on scaling, you know, coaching and mentorship programs that can help people get the lives of their dreams.
- [27:33]
Dion Pouncel
So on the make money side, why are people scared or not understanding how to make money online via social media or paid ads?
- [27:41]
Dan
I think the majority of people just don't want to put themselves out there and they're deathly afraid of failure and they're even more afraid of being perceived publicly failing. To me and I'm sure you've had this happen. Failure just happens, it's just life and if you're not failing you're probably not going to learn because you only learn from your mistakes. You don't learn as much from your successes. Your successes are usually blind luck. It's like we had this idea, the idea did well okay great. Now that doesn't universally apply to every idea we're ever going to have. Going to try tons of I had a gym over a million dollar loss biohacking gym before it's time now there's tons of biohacking stuff. It's a craze but in Covid during a pandemic having a gym major l and I've had a million other ideas. I mean dude, I've had over 100 registered corpse I probably only made money at 1520 companies and a lot of people don't see that part. They just see the flashy cars, the nice houses, living in a million cities, private jets, all that stuff and think oh yeah it must be nice or oh that guy got lucky. It's like, no, you just fail a lot. And a lot of people are very, very afraid to fail.
- [28:42]
Dion Pouncel
I like having blood discussions. I like talking about failures and lawsuits and headaches and employees and situations and partnerships and all the things that come with it, because that is real life. You're going to have situations, especially as you scale, you go from 1 million to 5 million to 10 million to 30 million, 100 million, etc. There are different devils and evils and situations and partnerships and the way people change around you before, during, and after every situation. It's a fascinating dynamic, but people don't talk about it because they want to pretend like everything's perfect all the time. If someone's ready to make the leap right there, you know, they're making 60 grand a year in their job, they. They want to start making a little bit of money online and hopefully replace their income at some point. I tell people, don't quit your day job because even when you successfully do something, you're going to pour the gasoline back on the fire to keep doing it. So even if you make money, you got to put it back in. And even if you scale something, you got to put the money back in. And so I say, don't keep it. You know, don't quit your day job. What are your thoughts about someone, they're making 60 grand a year, but they want to make, you know, an extra 1,000, 2,000 bucks a month online. What should they be doing? Researching or what?
- [29:42]
Dan
Yeah. So, I mean, I want to agree, never quit your day job. I tell people that no matter what they plan on doing, pivoting to, if you have a stable source of income and you don't have a massive surplus of savings like a big war chest, do not quit your job that provides you the meals.
- [29:56]
Dion Pouncel
Yeah.
- [29:56]
Dan
Because otherwise you're screwed. And a lot of people, like, I want my back up against the wall. No, you don't.
- [30:00]
Dion Pouncel
You don't.
- [30:00]
Dan
You really don't.
- [30:01]
Dion Pouncel
Not built like that.
- [30:02]
Dan
No. And you, and you might be, and you'll find out the hard way, but most people, 95, 99%, they're not built like that. To me, I think you take the thing that you're doing well. Think, what could I do like that in my off time to make extra money or if I want to do something totally different, that I don't like that thing I'm doing, let's say I want to probably tell people to start in sales. The reason being if you sell something, someone else has already proven a lot of the guesswork is taken out and you don't have to quit your day job. Yeah, exactly. And you get to learn. You get to learn how that operation functions, what all the different roles are, all the different teams, the different departments. And then you can eventually replicate that over time when you have something that you can sell that is your own.
- [30:40]
Dion Pouncel
Yeah.
- [30:40]
Dan
And I think a lot of people, they chase the next shiny object thinking that buying some information from somebody or paying somebody to mentor them, which is oftentimes really bad deal because they're not ready for the mentorship. And they just think if I pay this person, they'll just tell me how to be successful. No, I mean like people like us that have been successful, we can only tell people the answers to the questions that they have for us to try to download or upload to them. Everything that we've ever done, it's never going to happen. We couldn't spend enough time if we tried. So I think a lot of people are looking for the wrong thing and they should just be looking for what is the low hanging fruit opportunity where I can put additional money in my bank that can eventually replace my day job doing something I maybe like more or if I don't like it more, on the road to doing something I like more. And I usually think that sales.
- [31:24]
Dion Pouncel
So let me break down the don't quit your day job concept. So let's say Bowski and I decide we're going to invest into your company and you make green T shirts dot com. Green T shirts dot com. You've already tested the market. You already know that. Brown, blue, yellow. You just know green is the one. Right? You've already tested it. So we put up 250k each. We give you $500,000. So go launch green turtles dot com. Great. You go out there and crush it and do $1.2 million in sales the first year. Bowski and I are happy. We're proud of you. Like, good job. You already succeeded far better than we could have expected for your first year. Guess how much you made on $1.2 million in sales on your first year. It rhymes with zero. And you actually might be in debt. You actually might be calling us for more money. Because when it works on green T shirts, if it's 1.2 million sales, you probably need to spend 400k to 600k on the actual shirts. The inventory. You probably spent $200,000 on paid ads. You probably had Bowski help you do it. He still had to spend the money for you. Even if he's More efficient at it, still spent it. So 4 to 600k on the inventory, 200k on the paid ads. You got an office for 5 grand a month. You got three employees at 4 grand a month each. That's another 12 grand a month. You went to the trade show. It's at the convention called Magic in Las Vegas. You went to the ASR show, the action sports retail show in Huntington Beach. Bada bing, bada boom. That's 30 grand here, 50 grand here, 20 grand here. You paid some taxes and then you hired an accounting firm. You hired a law firm. That's 40 grand. That's 20 grand. You see where I'm going? Even when you crushed it at 1.2 million, we're proud of you, your valuation went up. Maybe you're worth 3 to 5 million now. So kudos to us. But for you, you made zero. And then next year you really crush it. 1.2. You jumped to $3 million. Guess how much you made. Rhymes with zero again. Why? Because now you spent 1.2 to 1.5 million inventory. You spent $600,000 of paid ads. You got a bigger booth to the convention. You went from four employees to 15 employees. You see where I'm going? You're going to keep pouring the gas in the fire because that's what you should be doing. How dare you try to pull out 50 grand when that 50 grand has turned into 200. Why would you pull the money out to cover your overhead? So what if you didn't quit your day job? What if you had money saved up and then once you had the money saved up for a year or two of overhead, you then you made the leap. We would actually like you even more because we felt more comfortable for you. We want you to be able to pull out some money later, not at the beginning, because at first we're protecting our investment. Second, we want you to start making some money. But if you go out there and start pulling out 50 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand for your overhead, you're going to be literally hurting your own business and hurting the scale and hurting the valuation. That 50 grand, 100 grand, is worth $300,000 in sales. That $300,000 in sales is worth a million dollars to valuation. So what's the 50 grand worth? It? No.
- [34:02]
Dan
I'll tell you the worst part about the 50 grand. When the person starts taking the 50, 100 grand, let's say you're crushing it and they have the ability to grow and scale. Or they could stay at their like 1.5 million number where they're able to pull out 300 grand a year. We as investors, we're screwed for sure. Not only are we screwed financially because the valuation is never going to go up because they're not growing and because the profit, even if we own a chunk of the company, it's going to take forever to pay us back. But we're screwed because that person's life just changed. And a lot of people, when they experience that first big shift where they go from making 50, 60, 100 grand to half a million plus or 300 grand plus or, you know, in this day and age, especially around a million plus, when they start making that type of money, everything changes. And most people don't keep the hunger. They think, I'm rich now. And in insurance, we called the Ferrari boys because they would make their first, you know, 500 grand and spend 300 on a Ferrari or Lambo. And it's a real problem, but everybody does it because they want to keep up with the Joneses. The reality is most of the people they're trying to keep up with don't have it either. And you start to see who has it and who doesn't when they have it for 10 years straight.
- [35:04]
Dion Pouncel
Sure.
- [35:04]
Dan
But these people, they see, oh, my friend has this watch, I got to go get a better watch, or my friend's got that, I got to get this. The second you start taking that money out and it hits the bank, people don't realize it's so easy to spend money for sure. And it's easy to make money, too. Don't get me wrong. If you have a good plan, it's easy to make money once you know how to make money. But when you're learning how to make money and you might have just lucked into some, and you start blowing it, recipe for disaster.
- [35:27]
Dion Pouncel
So on the make money side, last question before we go to the investing side. You've mentioned insurance a few times.
- [35:32]
Dan
Yep.
- [35:33]
Dion Pouncel
We have mutual friends and some of my friends that have insurance companies or working on insurance or going to work with some of our friends. Why is insurance space a good business to go work? Maybe as someone's first job in sales man.
- [35:44]
Dan
Well, it teaches you how to prepare for rejection very well and how to get accustomed to it. Because a lot of the time when you sell insurance, you're either knocking on doors, meeting people face to face, or you're making phone calls. Those are like the three mediums not a lot of people sell digitally. And it's just not scalable. People don't want insurance until you explain to them why they need it typically. Or they know that they need it and they come to you to get it. And it's a matter of are you cheaper, are you more personable, why should they buy from you, etc. I think it's a really good opportunity because one, it makes a lot of money. Insurance is a great business. Like it makes money. It's been around for a long time, it's a proven model and it's all based on actuarial data. So you have a plan and you have loss ratios and you know exactly what it costs for you to fulfill that plan. So maybe it's, you know, $0.50 on the dollar, maybe it's $0.80 on the dollar plus plus. And you know that that margin there exists for either the company to make money, the agent to get paid, or whatever the situation might be. And there could be upsells, cross sells, all those things. That's for the carriers to worry about. For a salesperson, though, it's a tremendous way to make a lot of money because let's say you're doing life insurance. You sold one person a policy a day and you took a standard advance. And let's say you service the customers and they pay off. You could make a thousand dollars a day.
- [36:53]
Dion Pouncel
A day?
- [36:54]
Dan
A day, just, just selling like one person, one family, a life insurance policy.
- [36:58]
Dion Pouncel
They can make 20 grand a month.
- [36:59]
Dan
100.
- [37:00]
Dion Pouncel
Wow.
- [37:00]
Dan
And I'm not even a life insurance guy, I'm a health insurance guy. You could do the same thing in Medicare where the LTVs are around 12. And you could sell a person, have $300 in client acquisition cost, and you're the one selling, you're the one servicing. You could also make $1,000 a day there. But instead of advancing it, it's realized over time in small little chunks of, you know, $30 bonuses here, there, etc. In health, though, the reason why I liked health and why I told people to get in health, now it's very seasonal because the American Rescue Plan act, inflation Reduction act stuff that made it all year round, it's coming to a close at the end of this year. But even as a seasonal business, you can work for three months and make enough money to live for the entire year and try all the things you want to try. Because let's say you can enroll 10 people a day, which is not a hard thing to do, by the way. The average guy can do that any average Joe. You enroll 10 people a day and it's not sales. Everybody needs health insurance, 10 people a day. The average one of those plans will be worth Somewhere around 350, 400 bucks, depending on your commission levels, contracts. Let's even round down to 300. You got three grand a day coming in. Your cost was a hundred bucks per. So you've got $2,000 a day in profit as an independent guy just sitting in his bedroom selling health insurance.
- [38:06]
Dion Pouncel
Whoa.
- [38:07]
Dan
And a health insurance license, a couple hundred bucks to get. So you go do that. You spend two weeks studying, you take the test, you're out the door, you start your own agency. So you have a business for write offs. And again, 40 grand in a month. You do that for three months, you have 120 grand. Most people, their households make 100 grand a year now, dual income households. So if you've got that 120 grand and it's all residual income and you're answering the phone, answer some questions for your clients and be a good guy, whatever, you've got the rest of the year to play around and figure out what you want to do next or pick up a new hustle or, you know, something else. And that's why I like the don't quit your day job. But also do something that creates recurring income.
- [38:42]
Dion Pouncel
Sure.
- [38:43]
Dan
Because the recurring revenue model, it's great if it's profitable. And insurance is a highly profitable way to do it. So I like that as a vehicle to get started because I've seen it work for so many people and I've taught so many people how to become millionaires doing it. I don't like, sell a course on it. I'm not like out here trying to train people on it, but it really is one of the best ways.
- [39:02]
Dion Pouncel
All right, so now they made the money, they listened to you, they took the leap, they went and sold insurance. They got into that space, they made six figures, they got some money to invest. But there's real estate, the stock market, cryptocurrency, angel investing. There's so many different options. How can someone research or decide what the heck to invest into?
- [39:21]
Dan
It's a terrible question to ask me. I try to invest in as little things as possible other than myself. I try to stay pretty liquid. Or I buy assets that I enjoy because I think happiness ROI is really important, like being able to get happiness on the money that you spend. So for me, it might be having a few nice cars or a really nice house or maybe five houses in different places and being able to travel. And those things make me happy and are good investments for me because the Happier I am, the better I perform. And not everybody's like that. And obviously not everybody has the same money to play with. I think when you're making your first bit of money, I personally believe high yield savings if you are somebody who can repurpose that money. So a lot of people don't think about how to repurpose money. They just think, I have money in a bank and it's going up and that's good. Not necessarily because the value of the dollar has been going down lately. So you can put it into like an S and P and try to battle inflation or, you know, an index fund or something like that, which is fine. You can put it in a high yield savings again, try to battle part of inflation, that's fine. But I think people should always be looking for what the next thing is and just be open to different ideas. Like you've talked about franchises to me, where I've been, like, it's actually not a terrible idea. That could be a good idea. And for some people it would be. And for other people, real estate's a good idea. Some people are naturally more risk tolerant and trading might be good for them. I personally will not trade at all. My buddy convinced me to put 300 grand into a crypto project last year. It wasn't like a meme coin, it was like a real project. I mean, it was Worldcoin backed by OpenAI. Took a freaking bath on it. I threw another 100 grand in. Still I'm taking a bath and I think it's less than half of what I put it into it. I mean, it's a terrible, terrible situation. But I was just like, yeah, sure, I'll gamble it. But for some people, they do that with their entire livelihood. I think gambling, high risk investments, I consider them gambling should be made with a very small amount of the money that you have to play with. And I think otherwise. You should do your research, do your due diligence, make safe investments. I don't think real estate is the greatest investment primarily because the market's been flat. And I think that most people are buying overvalued properties with way too high of interest rates. And it just doesn't make any financial sense because you can't even rent for the mortgage right now at a lot of places. So if I can't rent the place out to pay the mortgage, why would I invest in that property? But people think I buy real estate, I get wealth and it's just not how it works all the time. You have to be savvy so my advice to people on investing is research every possible opportunity and then find the wins. Follow the wins. Not the wins from five years ago or 10 years ago, the current wins. See where people that you know are winning. And if you don't know where people are winning yet, don't rush to put your money anywhere, save it. But my personal philosophy is invest in myself and invest in businesses I believe in. Because if I can partner with somebody and I trust them to do the work and they have a proven track record, I want to give that guy my money. Just the same reason people want to do business with me, because I'm good at what I do. Or business with you because you're good at what you do. That's what my advice would be. Get good at something, invest in yourself and keep scaling that thing that you're good at until you can't anymore. And then start thinking of where to park your money.
- [42:24]
Dion Pouncel
So you reference investing in yourself a few different times. What are some ways that people could invest into themselves?
- [42:30]
Dan
So I used to be anti course, anti program, anti mentorship, all that stuff. I'm still somewhat anti mentorship. Depending on like you really have to know that you can extract value and you know that person's real and you know that they have knowledge that you want. But lately I'll buy any info product just to see what people are doing. I just want to know what makes their offer tick. Why are they structuring it the way they're structuring it? Could they have done it better? Is there an opportunity to do it better? Is the character even real? Is the program valuable? Like those are reasons that I spend money. And I think a lot of people, when they're looking for new skills, they do the thing where they get on the phone with a high ticket salesperson and get pressured into buying something. And it wasn't even the right fit for them. The right program. And I'm not saying that there is a right program, but knowledge is important and the more you learn about more things, the more conversations you can have. And if you're. I've said this to people that have paid me for I have a $50,000 program and it teaches you how to do lead gen soup to nuts 50 chapters. I mean it's an in depth thing and for 5% of revenue, we'll coach you through it. It's a whole thing. There are people that do nothing after paying that money and there are people that go balls to the wall and crush it. And there are people that I Taught this to for years for free, that have been really successful. But I don't tell people to give me their last 50 grand. And people have tried and they're like, oh, my back's against the wall, I'll do better. It's like, hell no, I don't want your money. Because that guy's going to call me 472 times about why he's not doing the work right. And I think that people rush to invest in something because they think that they can do a thing, but they should first look internally and see what could be best for me, like my personality type, my risk tolerance, and then what of those things do I think I would enjoy? Like I always tell people, before you make any investment in yourself or decide on any business venture, you should always think and ask five questions. The most important one is, what do you do every day to someone who already does it? And the reason is if you ask somebody what they do every day and you don't want to commit to that lifestyle. For example, if I said I make $10 million a year and I run a call center, I don't. But if I did and you said, oh, I want to travel the world and work remotely, that would be a bad fit. That's a non starter. Now you might say, well, I would grind away to make $10 million a year and then go do that. But the odds of you succeeding as much as the person that's teaching people is not very high. So I would say that's a mismatch. Now, if somebody told you, here's how you can make a million dollars a year traveling the world and it was real and you saw people doing it, you knew people that had done it that might be a good fit because it aligns with what you want. I think a lot of people don't do good enough vetting of what they really want and what they think they'll actually be good at.
- [45:03]
Dion Pouncel
The last topic is about charity. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Why do you think it's important for a brand or an office or a manager to have some type of charity component into their life or into their corporate culture, man.
- [45:17]
Dan
So I've never forced anybody that works with me for me to donate. I personally donate more to individual causes than I do to big charities a lot of the time. Because it takes a lot of due diligence to know that a charity is a good charity. Like, I know a lot of the work that you do is very good. Like, I've done the, the toy drive that you did, the world record holding toy drive. Came there, brought some toys. That was awesome. Super fun to watch. That was really cool. Great experience. Strongly recommend everybody does it. But I was on the board of advisory board of a non profit that puts homeless people into houses. And I got to learn a lot about homeless people, why and how they become homeless, that some of them actually become accustomed to it. It's almost like Stockholm syndrome and like it and think we're crazy for having homes, jobs, responsibilities, bills, etc. But I think you should always do something that you believe in. And as someone who briefly lived in my car, it's like, all right, I was one step away from that. Like, what would have got me there? For me, it was a failed business. For some people it's a divorce or it's drugs. So that really resonated with me. Like these people just need somebody to help them. Whether it was donating clothes or, you know, renting rehab beds at, you know, sober living facilities and putting them into those. There were a lot of really cool things. We did a lot of community events, a lot of speaking events, and that was really nice. But people should always find a charity that they believe in and do the research to make sure that they're doing good things with the money. Because just donating to Goodwill and saying that you did charity, it's bs. Like, when I first made my first million dollars, I had a lot of credit card points. I had like 1.8 million at the time. Later I had almost 15. But at the time, at one point, yeah, I just didn't spend them for like a year or almost two years, but 1.8 million points. And it was coming up to Thanksgiving and a lot of people were really depressed at that point. It was, you know, it wasn't even a bad economy. They just couldn't go see their families and whatever. And I just discovered this pocket of people online that were like veterans or just random people that couldn't afford to see their families. So to me, I was like, how many of these people can I use a million points to help?
- [47:12]
Dion Pouncel
Yep.
- [47:12]
Dan
So I took a million points. I think I ended up using 890 000. And I sent people to go see their families. They weren't all like veterans. I'm not saying everybody was a real charity case like that actually needed the charity. Some of them were just people that like, couldn't afford to see their families. But I got thank you letters from moms. I've gotten like moms adding Me on social media for years to come and messaging me like, hey, here's a picture of that time you never forget. You changed our life.
- [47:33]
Dion Pouncel
So cool.
- [47:34]
Dan
So every year I try to, like, find individual causes where not somebody's dog got sick. Go fund me is not like, oh, my cousin's cousin's best friend from college's sister died at 30 years old. Let me donate. Like, I don't know these people. I want to know where my money's going. So when it's somebody who's like, yeah, I haven't seen my kids in two years because I can't afford to go see them and their mother has custody, I want to pay for that guy. For the guy who's like, yeah, my. My parents are getting really old and they're not going to be around much longer, and I can't afford to go there. I want to be that guy's helper. So that's my philosophy on charity, is just try to help others. And the other thing is, I run my companies like a socialist. Like a socialist dictatorship. Everybody gets a lot of money, Everybody earns a lot of money, and sometimes that's burned me, and I've had people screw me.
- [48:17]
Dion Pouncel
Y.
- [48:17]
Dan
But watching people buy their dream houses, their dream cars, whether it's exotics or, you know, my COO was making seven figures a year and bought a BMW 5 Series. That was his dream car.
- [48:27]
Dion Pouncel
Cool.
- [48:27]
Dan
Actually leased it. But whatever people's dreams are, watching them achieve them is really powerful, and it makes you feel good. And so being able to provide those dreams to other people in need, that's kind of where I like to do my charity.
- [48:40]
Dion Pouncel
So, final question. We're going into a crazy summer where the media is going wild, the economy is going wild, there's a lot of action that's happening throughout the Internet, to say the least. How can people stay calm in the chaos as we go through this?
- [48:57]
Dan
To me, bury your head in the sand and don't pay attention to it. I try to avoid the news as much as possible. Nobody is writing news to tell you good things. They're writing news to get you to click, to get you to feel something, and it's often a negative emotion. I don't want to be subjected to that. I stay in my little bubble. I keep a tight circle. I have good friends, and I try to spend good time, meaningful time with people I care about and spend the rest of my time working on projects that I think will either better my life, lives of others, or. Or, you know, just having fun that to me is how to. How to win. I don't think people should be consumed by what's happening in the market, because the reality is you have no control. And a lot of people think, oh, well, if I just join this activist group, we'll have control. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your picket sign. Nobody cares about your opinion. You don't matter. Not even if there's a million of you. You don't matter. So stay in the world that you can control with your friends, with your family, do meaningful things that make you happy, and try to just continue to get ahead. Because we live in a capitalist country where the best thing that could ever happen and a weird tangent and an anecdote to end this. But when I was really broke and I was living part time with my grandparents, and I ended up living in my car full time, I was like, man, I've got to figure out a way out of this. And I had a job, and I was doing sales, and I went to work every day, and I worked 8 to 12 hours, Bell to bell. I would stay late, whatever. And people that knew me were like, how do you just work knowing that, like, everything is collapsing on the outside? And for me, it was compartmentalization. And I think it's one of the greatest skills that anybody could have, whether it's as an entrepreneur, as an individual in a relationship, anywhere. Because if you can put aside all the fires that are burning and just put up a wall, you can make it through anything. Most people, they let the fire burn down the house while they're trying to make dinner. And that was the number one skill. So to me, compartmentalize the outside world. If people are negative, remove them from your life temporarily or distance yourself. Be less responsive, even if it's family or friends, and they will eventually come around and not be so negative, especially when you're on, like, an entrepreneurial journey or something like that. But I think the number one thing people can do is just shut out the outside world. Don't pay attention to the news. Don't look at the stock market. Even if you have money in it, don't look at it. You put it in there to stash it away and not pay attention, right? Don't pay attention. If everyone's crying about it, don't even look. It's just gonna upset you. What good's that going to do? It's Schrodinger's cat. You don't know if there's money left or not. Don't open it.
- [51:19]
Dion Pouncel
All right, everyone, you're listening to the Money Mondays, check out Bowski on social media. It's B O W S K Y across Instagram, other platforms. Listen to themoney Mondays.com for your friends, family and followers. What I mean by that A lot of times you're listening to different characters are coming on here. Whether they spend hundreds of millions on paid ads, they're investors, traders, stocks, business billionaires, etc. All of them have different perspectives. And not all of it's for you, but it might be for your friends, family and followers. It also might be for people from your past, present and your future. So when you're listening to these podcasts, just keep in mind there are tidbits of things that may apply to you later for someone else in your life. And so if there's something here that's, you know, someone's building an entrepreneurial business, you might want to be forwarding the podcast to someone like that. Let them hear from someone like Bowski. Follow them on social media. Check us out on the moneymondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday. Monday.